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Well, Gamergate is all about ethics in journalism and that doesn’t have anything to do with lifting a finger to speak out against SWATing feminists or other gamergate critics.

The proper way to respond if you’re sincerely worried about ethics in journalism is to pretend it never happens or accuse them of SWATing themselves or to wet yourself out of rage because mean feminists are making it a legal issue and interfering with the righteous harmless pranking of manly men as a prelude to the feminist holocaust.

There is also the opposite concern: The policegoons not responding to a genuine incident due to the number-of / expense-of / tragedy(scandal)-at previous false incidents.

I very much doubt it. In America, the Police are like the military in many ways, and one of them is that we will pay anything to keep them overreacting to situations where careful investigation followed by quiet diplomacy would be more appropriate. Now, if they were merely sending a lone officer out every time, and these lone officers weren’t shooting any guns, then there might be funding issues, but as long as the SWAT approach is used? The federal government will make up any budget shortfalls with grants. Heck, the cops will list the fake incidents as accomplishments! “We had a total of 4 SWAT dispatches with only 2 fatalities.”

On the plus side, if the Oakland Police are really investigating this, then the perpetrator is pretty certainly going to get caught. The call was “made from an iPad”, and calls to police departments from cellular phones are not just logged but actually geolocated. Leaving aside the fact that any cellular call is going to identify the caller to some extent (and an iPad is unlikely to be a throwaway cellular account), if you call 911 in the US from a cellular phone of any kind, and you are in an urban area, they know where you’re calling from to within something like 25 feet, and IIRC that applies to the non-emergency lines of most police departments as well. (In less densely-populated areas, the accuracy isn’t as high, because it relies on triangulation from the local towers. From a landline phone they know where the phone is supposed to be, approximately — but the location may be a very broad one, and if the phone is connected with VoIP the official location may be entirely fictitious; the spoofability of VoIP locations is actually a serious concern for public safety which emergency services people don’t like but can’t do anything about.)

But they’re only about corruption in journalism!
Yes, and this handy excuse means two things: A) there is never an harassment that they feel the need to distance themselves from, because they are (ostensibly at least) not about harassing, and B) asking them to take a stand against it would be MISSION CREEP OMG because they are not about not harassing either. You can’t tell them what to do, fukken SJW!!!2

Let’s not forget the other part of this – this is at least one weapon the GGers wouldn’t have if not for our militarized police, who think a full, violent SWAT engagement is sensible for a warrantless search based on an anonymous phonecall.

Even if they legitimately thought there was a threat at the start of the raid, why the fuck are they forcing to the ground, handcuffing, and even stepping on people who are clearly non-confrontational?

GamerGators say “We’re only about ethics in gaming journalism, don’t ask us to take an ethical stand on any other issues, even when it involves actions of people in our group and done in the name of keeping our cause pure!”

That sounds an awful lot like “Atheism is only a lack of belief in gods, don’t ask us to take an ethical stance on any other issues, even when it involves actions of people in our group and done in the name of keeping our cause pure!”

I’m not making any absolute claim, just spelling out the obvious similarities

The Vicar: I agree with most of what you say, but I can’t call the existence of SWAT units an example of militarisation of the police. Even countries where police are not routinely armed with guns like the UK have tactical response teams. And even in the US, where militarisation of police is a real problem, the SWAT units seem to be very professional. Has anyone been seriously hurt or killed by a fake SWAT call yet? I’m not aware of it. (Actually, I just checked — it’s only Wikipedia, but of the cases listed, none of them resulted in an injury to the hoaxed person and the worst injury was when one of the police officers was shot by a resident who had no idea it was the police at his door–fortunately the officer was wearing a bulletproof vest and was not seriously injured; it’s also worth noting that this wasn’t a SWAT team at work, who probably would have done a bit more to work out the situation before barging in.)

To me, militarisation of police is what happens when what should be a limited tactical response to rare situations becomes normalised in everyday police work by cops — usually made worse by inadequate training and a dangerously unaccountable professional culture.

The GamerGate position seems to be that Randi faked the whole thing. There are now countless “debunkings”, where some ludicrous incompetent pontificates about laws and police procedures they don’t understand in the slightest.

GamerGaters have a Slymepit-like inability to admit that one of their own has truly wronged one of their enemies. This usually takes the form of playing down abuse, but when they’re backed into a corner, the last resort option is to accuse the victim of lying.

The Slymepitters did a similar thing when a Pharyngulite was threatened with rape in Thunderf00t’s blog comments. They had no way of playing it down, and so they accused her (without the slightest evidence) of posting the threat herself. The lie was repeated until it “became” hard fact, and is now part of their standard repertoire of accusations against FTB.

GamerGators say “We’re only about ethics in gaming journalism, don’t ask us to take an ethical stand on any other issues, even when it involves actions of people in our group and done in the name of keeping our cause pure!”

That sounds an awful lot like “Atheism is only a lack of belief in gods, don’t ask us to take an ethical stance on any other issues, even when it involves actions of people in our group and done in the name of keeping our cause pure!”

Speaking of police overreacting, is this statistic (115 people killed by US police in March) genuine?
.http://www.killedbypolice.net/
.
I have no reason to doubt it other than its mind-boggling size. A HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN? WOW! That is more than cops have killed in the UK in a century. (Link to Daily Kos.)
.http://tinyurl.com/ozkpa3z

“To me, militarisation of police is what happens when what should be a limited tactical response to rare situations becomes normalised in everyday police work by cops — usually made worse by inadequate training and a dangerously unaccountable professional culture.”

And even in the US, where militarisation of police is a real problem, the SWAT units seem to be very professional. Has anyone been seriously hurt or killed by a fake SWAT call yet? I’m not aware of it.

Add up all the blue and green pins. Those are people who died unnecessarily, (that might also apply to some of the deaths of police officers).
Then add up all the pink and yellow pins. Most, maybe all, of those raids were to wrong addresses or unnecessary in some other way.

When you say they’re “professional”, beat in mind that some police forces use SWAT teams for all search warrants. I’d say that was over-egging the pudding in a big way.

Do you trust the police enough not to plant a few drugs / guns / stolen goods at the scene when that happens and claim that this justified everything?

skylanetc:

That is more than cops have killed in the UK in a century.

The Daily Kos sources that to a Wikipedia page which notes explicitly that it’s an incomplete list and with a few very rare exceptions, doesn’t include any deaths before 1977.

The Inquestorganisation figures suggest around 1500 deaths during or shortly following police involvement since 1990, mostly taking place in custody. Of those, 55 were shooting deaths. That’s not as bad as the US, but it’s not a rate which should be used as the “good” side of a comparison, either.

JAL, well clearly if we weren’t all such (various gendered slurs here) that aren’t at all ethical because were (even more gendered slurs), there wouldn’t be this hatred and dehumanization, so it’s totes our fault for existing in a way that the gamergaters don’t like.

Gamergate is never going to condemn these incidents because to them it’s a feature, not a bug. Even the potential for death is a bonus to them: Sure, they might talk a good game of not condoning those actions up-front, but if somebody were to actually end up dead in one of these swatting incidents there aren’t many gators who wouldn’t cheer the fact that one of their critics “got what they deserved.” All while simultaneously denying their movement’s involvement, of course.

@JAL #23:

What? Are you saying anti-Gaters are spreading hate and dehumanization and are responsible for getting themselves SWATted?

Anti-gaters sometimes use mean words and even use gators’ own words against them! And we all know violence is the most logical response to speech you don’t like. How else can you enforce ethics in games journalism?

I looked over that website, and yeah, it’s changed my mind on the use of SWAT units in the US. I was particularly gobsmacked by the botched raid where the police invited a couple of Navy SEALS to participate, presumably for the macho kicks and damn due process. In my defence, I was assuming that unprofessional behaviour from US police couldn’t possibly be that bad or that stupid…

bigwhale@20: it took me a couple of read-throughs to realise what you were saying. At first glance, it looks like you’re blaming the victims of gamergaters for dehumanising gamers, thus triggering SWATing. Now I realise that what you were saying to ansatz is that a quick, facile condemnation of SWATing is not sufficient to absolve gamergate of its worst excesses.

If you read it again, it’s a response to ansatz’s #7, which in turn is a response to PZ asking Gamergaters to condemn swatting. So I think bigwhale is asking ansatz (someone representing gamergate) to admit that they’re partly responsible for spreading the hate that leads to swatting.

OK, Saad, on reread I get your take on this. Let’s take the first line “Thanks for the condemnation.” which is an incomplete sentence.

That read to me as playing the victim, a bully move. If written “the condemnation of so-and-so” there’s no ambiguity. So if bigwhale wants to be understood correctly, my comment @ 28 applies: write in the active voice.

I think there’s some misunderstand of bigwhale’s #20.
If you read it again, it’s a response to ansatz’s #7, which in turn is a response to PZ asking Gamergaters to condemn swatting. So I think bigwhale is asking ansatz (someone representing gamergate) to admit that they’re partly responsible for spreading the hate that leads to swatting.

Ohhh, but then why did bigwhale replaced SWATing with #gamergate in ansatz’s quote? Damn, blockquoting with names would’ve helped a lot here. Of course, it’d probably also help if I remembered going round with ansatz on several thread where they defended #gamergate and pulled sincere “but it’s about journalism in gaming” bullshit.

Bigwhale, if I read you wrong, I apologize. In my defense, at least I asked if that’s what you were saying in my #23.

I see I didn’t have to respond to your original doubt, but: yes. Yes, in the US, if you call in the police you are effectively asking them to use violence. It is now routine for police to break down doors without warrants, and to shoot housepets on sight, even when responding to non-violent calls. If you live with someone who has a mental disability, and you call the police, chances are good they’ll end up getting killed by the police. (So don’t do that unless you consider that a reasonable outcome.) If your kids are acting up and you call the police because they’ve done something which you can’t really do anything about on your own — like driven off in your car without saying where they were going — then there’s a good chance they’ll kill your kid. The police are rapidly reaching the point where in many cases — particularly in big cities like New York and Chicago — they do roughly as much damage as they prevent. And, since lawsuits over police misconduct have the local government as the defendant rather than the officer(s) who committed the offense(s) in question, the costs due to police misconduct are paid by the taxpayer rather than the offender, and costs are soaring to the point where insurance companies are refusing to renew insurance for law enforcement misconduct. (I have links for all this stuff, by the way, but I have a suspicion based on past experience that a post with that many links in that small a space would get held for moderation, so just go Google these things. It’s not that difficult to find the information once you start looking.)

As with a lot of American infrastructure (both physical and notional — banks and government as well as bridges and sewers), things are getting really bad and the only thing which keeps mass panic from breaking out in some cases is the (false) belief that “it can’t really be that bad”.

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I am with those who believe (tentatively, willing to revise in the face of further evidence) that big whale is telling gamergaters (in particular ansatz @#7, but the message isn’t so individualized) that “swatting is bad” is insufficient to relieve gamer haters (writ broadly) of responsibility for the predictable consequences of engaging in a campaign whose tactics (for whatever goal, I don’t give a shit if the “goal” is ethics in journalism) consist so substantially of abuse and harassment and dehumanization.

It would be nice if big whale clarified, but absent further evidence, I think the most plausible interpretation is the above and not one of victim blaming.

of course, that leaves bigwhale on the hook for writing ambiguously on a topic that has had too much horribleness to be throwing around benefits-of-doubts…but that’s a much lesser crime than bullshit victim-blaming.